Sagaing Hill, U Bein Bridge and Our Irrawaddy River Plans

I’m hoping not to jinx ourselves by saying this, but things seem to come together quite well when “winging it.” Our plan today was to finalize our plans for the next week or two and then do an afternoon tour of two of the four cities in the vicinity of Mandalay. Everything fell into place perfectly.

I’ll start with our afternoon visit to U Min Thonze Pagoda on Sagaing Hill and U Bein Bridge in Amarapura. I’ll quote the descriptions of each from our little brochure and map.

“U Min Thonze Pagoda on Sagaing Hill overlooks the back of this mountain. There are steps leading up to the first part of the temple, where you can see many Buddha figures aligned to form a magnificent image. Above, the temple does not offer much more, but there are interesting views where you can see a small temple where an old monk lives in solitude.”

“The three-quarter-mile-long U Bein Bridge, crossing Taungthaman Lake, is the longest teak bridge in the world, although a bit rickety in some parts. It has withstood the storms and floods of over two centuries.”

Now back to our successful day of trip planning and the route we will follow over the next three nights and four full days. I’ll update the rest a little later.

It all starts with asking the hotel’s front desk employees questions. Who better to ask than a local? They always come through because they have a friend, brother or someone they know who can put you in touch with their friend, brother, sister or uncle. In this case, we were hooked up with a beautiful lady named Aye Aye Nwe, who runs a small travel agency, is the Managing Director of KN Travels & Tours Co. and has lots of connections.

We told her what we wanted and voilà, she made it happen. We wanted a private riverboat to take us upstream on the Irrawaddy River to Kyaukmyaung. We then wanted to head downstream, with stops at Mingun, Ava and Yandabo, and our final destination being Bagan, where we want to go up in a hot air balloon at sunrise to view the hundreds of magnificent temples in the area.

We wanted to do this slowly over four days so we could stop and smell the roses along the way. We wanted a boat to ourselves and we didn’t want to spend a fortune doing it. Check, check, check and check!

We have a 64-foot riverboat with four people looking after all of our meals and needs, 36 cans of Myanmar Lager, a bottle of wine, and our Bluetooth speaker and Spotify via 4G on Ooredoo Telecom on our phone. We can laze and listen to tunes or whatever, whenever we want. River cruising at its best—not too bad in my books.

We depart tomorrow and will arrive in Bagan on the evening of March 1st. We’ll spend three nights in Bagan and then head out to further explore this beautiful country.

We spent three nights at the Hotel Yadanarbon Mandalay. Our room and bed were very comfortable, the staff were extremely helpful and friendly, and the rooftop infinity pool, deck and bar were perfect for a late-afternoon cool one or two. The downstairs restaurant also offered evening ethnic music, dance and puppet shows.

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